You Don't Help Seniors by Cutting Medicaid, Social Security, or Medicare

Editor's note: The following is the prepared opening statement by the author as part of testimony for a hearing before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging—titled “Making Washington Work for Seniors: Fighting to End Inflation and Achieve Fiscal Sanity”—on Wednesday, January 29, 2025 .

Good afternoon, Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Gillibrand, and distinguished members of the committee.

As executive director of Social Security Works, I travel across the country speaking with legions of primarily older Americans. Almost to a person, they are concerned about rising prices. These rising prices hurt older adults, endangering their ability to afford food, housing, and prescription drugs. They want Congress to take action.

Across the country, there is widespread bipartisan agreement on what people want: cracking down on corporate price gouging, improving Social Security’s annual cost-of-living adjustments, which keep up with rising prices and currently under-measure seniors’ cost of living, and reducing the price of prescription drugs by expanding Medicare’s power to negotiate. These are actionable policies that will help older adults adjust to inflation caused by global supply chain shocks and greedflation—which has contributed to rising costs over the past few years. In fact, Federal Reserve research found that corporate profits accounted for all the inflation in the first year of the pandemic recovery and 41 percent of inflation overall in the first two years of the post-pandemic recovery.

There is bipartisan agreement across this country about what people don’t want in response to rising prices: Republicans, Independents, and Democrats all agree that not one single penny of cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits should be made. There is absolute bipartisan agreement among people everywhere across the country.

Despite this, the House Republican majority announced proposals to slash trillions from Medicaid, our country’s largest provider of long-term care. Over 9 million Americans over 65 rely on Medicaid.

Cuts to Medicaid would force these seniors, and their families, to pay enormous out of pocket costs for long-term care—money they don’t have. It would also force millions of caregivers, most often women, out of the workforce. This would make it far harder for American families to pay their monthly bills. In addition, these proposals also include cuts to SNAP benefits, which 4.8 million older Americans rely on to put food on the table.

Just last week, the new Trump Administration repealed an Executive Order from President Biden that directed the federal government to find ways to lower drug prices. The Trump administration is already favoring Big Pharma at the expense of seniors and working families.

There have also been calls by Republicans to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which gives Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices on key prescription drugs. This could force many seniors to cut their life-sustaining medications in half due to higher costs. Many others would face a terrible choice between buying food, filling their prescriptions, and paying their heating bills.

Even Social Security, the most popular and effective program in America, is not safe. Last month, a Republican representative, who is a member of the DOGE Caucus, told me personally that “there will be some cuts” to Social Security and Medicare.

Let me be clear: these proposed cuts will do nothing to lower costs for average Americans or older adults; these cuts are being proposed to offset the cost of tax handouts for billionaires and corporations, who have already been shown to be responsible for rising costs. This Congress should value the interests of older adults above the wealthiest, and I hope that the Aging Committee will lead that charge.

Consider this: If an older adult can’t afford their drugs and groceries at the average Social Security benefit of $1900 a month, it is absolute fiscal insanity to think the solution is to cut their income! To take away their health care! To destroy Medicaid and force them to pay the average long-term care cost of around $100,000 per year! If they can’t afford the price of eggs, it is absolute fiscal insanity to believe they can afford them better without SNAP benefits.

I’m here to deliver a message to the members of this committee from older Americans across the country: You don’t lower prices by stealing health care. You don’t lower prices by giving giant tax cuts to billionaires and price gouging corporations. And you absolutely don’t lower prices by reducing the Social Security and other benefits that adults have worked their entire lives for.